Chocolate

They glided onto the ice as a swan would a lake, effortless and majestic. The shimmering blades under their feet carved neat contours into the groomed ice, and after three solitary spins each, they entwined like two butterflies meeting on a careless spring afternoon. Palms met, fingers laced, and suddenly they were one graceful figure twirling across the floor. His hands were rough and strong, a symptom of true masculinity, she thought. For a few seconds she became lost in a dream where he held her waist faithfully, grazed her forehead tenderly, and traced her hipbones sensually. Their synchronized strides propelled them to the center of the floor and with a swift thrust, she was sent soaring above his head where they sailed as one magnificent figurine for several moments. Without strain or wobble he lowered her, releasing his grip so that one perfectly balance blade on the ice was the only support she had to sustain her sweeping posture: an egret on it’s graceful descent. He mimicked her shadow as she took long strides around the rink and danced concise pirouettes until they became one again in a synchronized twirl that gained momentum the closer they became. He tucked her in tightly to his own body and they winded down with the natural fluidity of steady friction – nose to nose, breath to breath, heart to heart – until they were as still as the ice that supported them. This moment could be eternity she thought as they embraced. A single snowflake floated between their gaze and they were suddenly stirred by excitement. “Let it snow,” he whispered, and they giggled as they hurried off the ice toward the radiating warmth of the fire pit. The heaviness of passion and buzz of excitement left them speechlessly gleaming into each other’s eyes. Though their hearts felt more rapturous than the thirsty earth on the first rainfall after a drought, they both feared for the flood. To abate the lusty tension, he withdrew from their reverie to buy a warm beverage for them to share. He returned to her side with a cup of hot chocolate, which he tactfully laced with coffee so that she wouldn’t fall asleep on her long drive home. It was far too late in the night for caffeine by her standards, but she was charmed by his nurturing gesture so they passed the drink back and forth until the bottom of the cup peaked through the thick chocolate. They returned their rental skates and departed to their separate vehicles with a simple hug and promise to meet again soon. They had no fear for the sleeplessness that would torment them as they lay in their single beds tonight, for the evening seemed a dream in itself. 

Another Day

Another day with two feet on the ground

Another day with my head in the clouds

I lie on the floor sprawled like fall a leaf

Surrendering to the constant pull of gravity

Free my body from my lofty musing mind

Mulling over feelings I cannot define

But if gravity somehow reversed itself tonight

And everyone grabbed hold of trees to stay upright

Until the Earth flopped itself right side up again

I would let go and search for you instead

We could spiral through space aimlessly

Imagine where we could go and what we could be

Break free from self-constructed confines of our lives

Into the boundless world of our love we would dive

Chance

So there are these two awesome guys, Chance and Timing, and all I want is for them to run at me at full speed, Chance from the west and Timing from the east… run run run as fast as they can like a race to see who can get to me first, and then I’ll step north and they’ll collide – WHOOSH!!! BAM!! CRASH!!! POW!! BOOM!! – and my match will come out as one perfect man.

Three Reasons

Three reasons I’m still hanging on

Followed by three more I ought to forgo

Because the three kisses you left on these lips

Were three more than I expected to know

The three times you told me

That together we couldn’t be

Silenced these three words

Which were meant to be heard

I’ll give it three more days for your ghost to fade

There is no extent for it in this weeping heart

And though it’s unclear where you’ll be in three years

Those three reasons can't tear us apart

I Didn't Go There

There was a red meadow at Spiller Lake, way up high above the canyon. I didn’t go there.

It was mid-July and Cameron and I were assigned to survey two lakes on the Northeast side of Yosemite National Park. Being the first official Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog work trip of the year, we were excited to explore these areas we had never been to before, and become acquainted with (and ultimately emotionally attached to) the endangered frog populations residing there. We had a dual purpose, though: to spend three days at each lake catching and processing as many frogs as we could find, and to wrap up our Yosemite Toad surveys for the season.

Our first stop was Upper Mattie Lake, which was a wonderful privilege because the frogs there had been translocated only one month prior to our visit. Therefore, our count would be crucial in determining how many survived the introduction to a new habitat. The lake was picturesque especially as we descended upon it at sunset. We took a wrong turn and managed to discover a dangerous but rewarding portal into the Mattie basin. The Mountain Hemlocks slumped like Christmas trees weighed down with too many ornaments, and the granite mountains beamed an orange luminescence. Glassy and brilliant, the lake gleamed back at us with the same amazement we expressed. This was to be my second home for the next three months.

The surveys over the first three days proved successful yet disappointing. We only found half of the relocated population, most of which resided in the inlet, outlet, and stealthily within a half submerged fallen tree along the edge of the lake. Each frog we captured already possessed a PIT tag, a very small pill-shaped device inserted between the two skin layers of the amphibian. When read by a hand held scanner, a unique twelve-digit number is registered in order to identify individual frogs. We scan, weigh, sex, and swab each frog before releasing it, in order to determine its health status and disease load (chytrid fungus is a main contributer to the species’ decline).

On the fourth day of our backpacking trip, we hiked out of beautiful, remote Mattie and headed north on the PCT to Miller Lake. It had been a frog lake for a couple years already, but the population has always been very low. Most PCT hikers stop here for a swim and some even to camp along it’s gorgeous sandy shore. Due to the low number of amphibians at Miller, Cam would survey the lake for frogs, and I would locate and survey all of the toad meadows in the area. Each day was exhausting, as I would hike all day looking for Yosemite Toad tadpoles and eggs in the meadows along the ridge west of Matterhorn Canyon. When I would arrive back at camp, I would usually find Cam lounging on a rock outcropping reading a book, or huddled in the tent to escape the rain. He would yawn and tell me that he walked three laps around the lake and caught only ten frogs and was finished surveying by the early afternoon. I would spill my day to him, the up and downs, the mountain faces I scaled, the mile-long meadows I walked, the tadpoles I discovered, and the deer I spooked. I’d tell him about the people I met along the trail on the way home and our rejuvenating conversations, and about running from the lightening. Each day of solo toad surveying filled me up with fear, excitement, joy, appreciation, and triumph all the same, as I felt like a true mountaineer visiting places very few people have gone before. This was my passion and I felt I was the perfect fit for the job, covering over fifteen miles per day mostly off-trail, simply to determine if a meadow contained toads or not. As a natural overachiever, I wanted to survey every meadow within a ten-mile radius of the lake and the trail back out to Tuolmne meadows.     

Cam’s third day of surveying Mattie would be my day to hike down the trail toward Tuolmne Meadows, taking off shoots to survey toad meadows. He had planned to survey the lake until noon, then hike to where Spiller Creek met the PCT. Here, he would either find my backpack on the side of the trail with a note indicating which meadows I was hiking up the creek to survey, or he would find nothing, indicating that I had already passed through and would meet him in Smokey Jack Meadow to locate three more toad meadows which we would survey together. When I arrived at this junction early in the morning, I threw down my pack, removed my bear-proof food canister (so bears don’t rip your backpack apart trying to remove it themselves), and scribbled a note to Cameron that I would survey the four meadows up near Spiller Lake, about a five-mile offshoot from the trail. On our maps, one of them was shaded blue (indicating toads have historically been found there and there is suitable habitat to sustain a toad population), two were shaded yellow (indicating these meadows had been visited in the past, but no tadpoles were found), and one was shaded red (indicating that it had never been surveyed before, but possibly has suitable habitat for toads). The red were the highest priority.

After a tough hike along the creek and then up the steep and wild terrain of the canyon, I walked transects across the two yellow meadows that I had located. Fortunately, one had tadpoles, an encouraging sign for the species! A little further up the mountainside, I emerged into a pristine meadow with a stream flowing through the center and pools scattered amongst its greenness. This was a blue meadow on the map, and I was eager to count tadpoles and perhaps even see some juvenile toads. As I was walking careful transects through the meadow, I was keeping a close and cautious eye on the dark clouds looming overhead. We had gotten mild thundershowers late in the week and they seemed to all be building up to something monstrous. I was just crossing my fingers that that beast wouldn’t manifest itself today. Halfway through the meadow I had already estimated over a thousand tadpoles, and several subadults (small toads one to three years old), when I stumbled upon a puddle with hundreds of metamorphs! These are jet black baby toads no bigger than a dime that had just transformed from tadpole stage to toad stage, some still possessing a long flat tail. As the cutest creatures I had seen in a while, I couldn’t help but try to capture some photos of them. I was so consumed by this amazing and fleeting phenomenon of amphibian metamorphosis that I forgot to keep an eye on the clouds, until I was suddenly quickened by a powerful clap of thunder. I immediately estimated the amount of baby toads I had discovered, entered the meadow attributes into my data-collecting device (a handy, government issued iPod Touch), and pondered whether it was worth my life to ascend to the exposed ridge of the mountain to survey the red meadow at Spiller Lake. The deciding factor was the next clap of thunder and the brooding gray clouds above the target meadow. A treeless lake above 10,600 ft was nowhere to be in a lightening storm, so I scampered the five frightful miles down the mountainside to Spiller Creek, then down Spiller Creek to the trail. In my haste I stumbled and slipped and submerged both boots in water in two separate creek crossings. Fatigued from log hopping and sliding down granite slabs, and ashamed that I hadn’t surveyed the red meadow at Spiller Lake, I reached the trail at the exact moment Cam was passing through. To this day I am not sure if it was coincidence or fate that brought us to the same lonely location along the trail in the same panicked desperation to flee from the storm.

As we hiked down the trail together in the rain, I felt a pang of guilt that I hadn’t surveyed that red meadow. I wanted to impress, and I wanted to collect concrete data that was significant to wrapping up the final season of the Yosemite Toad project. Most of all, I felt I missed out on a spectacular view that I had already painted in my head in anticipation. From Spiller Lake, I would look north and see the stunning spectacle of Matterhorn Peak and all the tallus cones aspiring to be as mighty someday. Panning west, I would gawk at the amazing jagged ridge that made up Finger Peaks against a background of all the shapes that comprised of Yosemite’s northwest border. To the southwest, I would try to name the bodies of water collecting in the basins of the mountains and the plateaus of the canyons. I might even catch a glance of Tenaya Lake guarded tenaciously by Cathedral Peak and Mount Watkins. Bowing to the great peaks, the many glorious white domes along the roadside would be protruding out of the dense forest. To the southeast I would see Mt. Dana and Lyell amongst other hungry giants with clouds skirting their pinnacles. Lastly it would have been an amazing view to peer across the park’s eastern border into the vast lakes that silently worshiping the underappreciated crest of white granite wedges hungry for the sky.

But I didn’t go there, and I don’t know of the true mystique the view from Spiller Lake holds.

Fortunately, I made the smart choice because only a mile down the trail Cam and I were stripping off our backpacks and fleeing into the denser trees down slope of the crest we were about to surmount. The lightening was flickering directly above us and we helplessly squatted under a thicket of young firs, wondering if we would ever find our discarded packs and the trail when the storm passed. We debated the seconds-to-mile ratio of a lightening strike and thunder roar, and concluded that it was best we didn’t know how close it really was to us. After a half hour the lightening advanced east and we were able to find our gear and timidly hike over the pass to the other side of the mountain, where the ground was thick with marble-sized hail balls. With soaked gear, we decided to hike the last ten miles to the truck in the pouring rain rather than set up camp at Glen Aulin. We navigated the final three miles of the trail by headlamp, and were too tired to complain about our aching bodies when we reached the roadside just after 9:00 PM. 

On the long car ride home, I gazed into the distance where the sky would briefly flicker like a fading candle, and hoped there were toads up at Spiller, happily staring up into the lightening storm like it was a star spangled sky.

Candy Apple Red

They were the type Momma wouldn’t let you take one step out of the house in. They would banish every ounce of innocence that the Good Lord prescribed to you at birth. There would be no hiding, no modest air where you could escape the ogling eyes, the double takes, the rubber necks. It was imperative to own the look, to be the audacity that brought them to life, or else slump into an impaired, self-conscious state. But I wore them, often once each week, and I wore them with reckless abandon. I was young and fit and limitless. They were my good luck charm, my invincibility, and my power. It was irrelevant to me how my body appeared in them, whether my butt bulged or my love handles popped, it only mattered where they took me and how fast. Those candy apple red spandex never let me lose a race or fall short of achieving a goal. All of the varsity girls on the cross country and track team were issued them, but no one gave them a name quite like I did. When they were on, I’d run so fast and so fiercely that spectators couldn’t make out the gold HEMET embossed across the upper right thigh. My competitors recognized me by the sheeny red radiance that constituted my ass leaving theirs in the dust. In my glory days they purveyed pride to my school, team, coach, family, and future. There was a time and place for that uniform, both of which are irretrievable like a star burning bright at the edge of the universe. The bold spandex have since lost their luster, now hidden beyond the neurons that spark from the black and white lines that read Ashley Beechan in the Hemet High record book.   

Suitably Warm

That fleeting moment between scalding your taste buds and retreating for the microwave. The juncture intervening the salty ocean water and a sunburn. The melting point of coconut oil. That elusive buzz separating ardor and loneliness. Repose amid challenging yourself and failing. Your hometown. The elixir after sober but before inebriated. The cocoon between obsession and torment. When you hold me at arms length, babe. Her companionship, his companionship...

There is no settlement at suitably warm, it's a transient waiting for the next train. 

Let's throw out the space heater and light our hearts on fire.

Journaling

Last December I decided to try a blogging challenge, where every day of the month, I would write about a specific prompt. I think I made it seven days. This time will be different! Here's to a month of writing:

1. suitably warm

2. candy apple red

3. I didn't go there

4. why didn't it happen to me?

5. shreds of doubt

6. can't be

7. where will it be found?

8. three reasons

9. chance

10. essence of __________

11. black horse

12. heartstrings

13. another day

14. the color yellow

15. eyes that can't see

16. renovate

17. chocolate

18. wild child

19. driving north

20. China

21. it's time to __________

22. don't laugh

23. rosemary

24. something new

25. pyramid

26. __________ at night

27. many pages

28. floating

29. wood

30. something witnessed

31. on a hill

In Love With a Ghost

Assure me your smile is not just a tease

A mere mirage in my desert of needs

You speak with your touch a language I know

So my puzzled heart flares a curative glow

Our romance dawned with the desert sun

Awakening, vibrant, beaming, sudden 

Vows written in sand on a gusty day

Perhaps to you were quickly erased

I gathered the grains before they blew away

Cached in an hourglass where they forever remain

When the sand drains I turn it over again

Confined in perpetual limbo of affection

My hope of repairing our abandoned fondness

Undulates with my breath, mercurial, will-less

My promise adheres to an intrinsic endurance

To appease a heart so blind, eyes so desirous

Though I worry this faith is too good to be true

You never gave me reason not to wait for you

Just the Two of Us

     I have a special place in my heart for first impressions. I am loving the first couple days getting to know Bruce, and am thus far pleased that it will be just me and him from now until spring. Our introduction began with a visual floor plan analysis, which of course included falling onto the bed, that's a must. The design is charming with an island (more like a peninsula), spacious kitchen, screened-in mudroom, ample deck space outside, with a picnic table. The windows look new - beautiful eyes to the soul - with unblemished screens and they close tightly. I immediately drew the blinds up on all nine of them to let the natural light bathe my experience. Next, all closets and drawers must be explored in order to do a rapid inventory of the kitchenware and gadgets. I found some delightful perks: a citrus juicer, coffee bean grinder, wine corker (though I am attached to the two dollar souvenir corkscrew I bought at a gas station store in Cambria while road tripping with Cameron), loaf pan, spare light bulbs, paper towels, cast iron skillets, and nutmeg. I even found a pocket-sized book titled The Art of the Love Letter, and it is indeed exactly that, as its chapters include the history of love letters, how to write love letters, and love letters from the past. I am unashamed to admit that this little book is right up my alley, and am taking it as a sign that I should never hesitate to write love letters whether I gift them to my hearts keeper or bury them between blank notebook pages to find later. I am far too sentimental to just let those thoughts and feelings evaporate.  
     There are those key traits you look for in every relationship, and I was disappointed that Bruce was lacking some near-essentials. There was no kettle nor toaster oven, an appliance I've never had until coming to Wawona, but am now hooked on. Bruce is also void of a landline telephone, a rubber spatula, and a functional sound system. There are entire matching sets of silverware and dishware, which I suppose is a desirable asset, but I've grown to find it more charming when there is a hodgepodge of mismatched kitchenware, each piece a special contribution from a very unique donator. That way, it's easy to find a favorite spoon or prefer the way a certain mug warms your palms without burning them. The wine glasses are gigantic, which I suppose would make one feel like he or she is drinking less, but it makes portion control more awkward.
     Advancing into the second day with Bruce, I've become aware of his quirks. You start to recognize these odds and ends after spending a night together. It may take a few weeks to learn to accept these things and eventually get to the point of not even noticing them (like the second hand on the clock ticking on your wall right now, how often do you actually listen to the clicks?). Bruce and I are taking to each other well, I am finding his sensitive spots and am learning to work around them. I'm still startled every time the fridge rattles when it shuts off or the furnace growls when it kicks on. There is the slightest incline in the floorboards when entering my room in the back and a brittle spot in the living room carpet where a stain was neglected. The shower door takes an extra umph to shut and the springs in the bed are annoyingly responsive of the most subtle of movements. The portable timer atop the oven rings a half hour after it ceases it's ticking at zero and the microwave beep screams again after two minutes just to remind you that your food or beverage has been sufficiently warmed... then again after two more minutes... and again in two more. I don't know how much endurance it has because I couldn't stand it anymore, and removed my mug of coffee before it could nag me again.
     Best of all, when the lights go out, he nurtures me with the cloudless night sky, or something close enough, as hundreds of green stars glow on the ceiling above me to remind me that I am in the best of all places.
     I think Bruce and I will get along just swell. In time, I will expose him to pieces of my life by adorning him with all the decor I like, and I'll find a place in his heart where I feel the coziest. I'll introduce him to my friends and I'm sure they will approve. My parents might worry, especially at the beginning of our time together, but they will find that he keeps me safe and isn't too needy. I may even begin to fall in love and become attached. He will surely miss me too because I will treat him right, but I can't stay here forever, so we'll go out separate ways. 

The Dawn of My Career Voyage

Imagine this: After an hour of off trail navigation through downed trees, up nearly vertical mountain slopes, across boisterous rivers, and over fresh bear shit, you arrive and at a lush clearing in the forest where the groundcover is vibrant with patches of purple and yellow flowers and the winding brook is babbling back at the bathing songbirds. Three deer beam at you in the distance, still gnawing in circular rhythmic motions on the forage they’ve yanked out of the fertile soil. The sunlight comes and goes in waves as wholesome cotton candy clouds drift by above at a surprisingly impressive speed considering the light breeze you feel from where you stand in the subalpine meadow you’ve discovered. You take a few strides forward and your tattered hiking boots are now toeing the edge of a pool that has diverged from the stream. A tiny plop three feet down the bank directs your vision to a copper-colored frog paddling leisurely to the opposite shoreline. It’s just a Pseudacris you say under your breath. Adorable, yes, but not your aim. A couple more careless strides to the low side of the pool and your boots are now two inches deluged in muddy water that the mat of grasses furtively hid. Subtle movements in the mud grasp your curiosity, so you squat down for a closer look, squinting painfully to see into the puddle, which only reflects the gray image of the clouds overhead. Then you see them and gasp: metamorphs! Awwwww! In your imagination, you couldn’t construct a cuter image than the one in front of your eyes: the smallest toads you can dream up, freshly morphed out of the tadpole stage, jet black and kicking lazily through the puddle. More of them are crawling through the mud and suddenly you feel surrounded, fearing that your feet may tragically be on top of a few. You’ve had ten quick seconds to embrace the moment for what it is: the warmth in your chest, the crows feet of your smiling eyes, positivity pulsing through your veins like when you stare into a huge cardboard box to find a litter of excited puppies leaping up to greet you. Suddenly, you hear the hungry grumble of thunder and peer up to see that the blue is gone and drops of rain are beginning to spot your face. Your biggest enemy in the wilderness is a lightening storm that builds quicker than you can react. With a jolt, your heart begins to race knowing that you’ll be burnt toast if you don’t seek lower elevations and heavy tree cover, so you estimate the number of metamorphs in your vicinity – twenty, fifty, eh… two hundred-ish – and bound down the mountain toward safety. The warm feeling from before now originates from the release of adrenaline, and as you race through the woods you wish the day had blessed you with a cloudless sky so you could sit down in the saturated meadow and watch the tiny toads swim laps across the puddles. Yet, that’s just another unpredictable day on the job, and you’re thankful for both the pleasure and the fear it brought you, as well as all the emotions in between.

Let’s rewind.

  

A job hunt from scratch with few applicable credentials can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack or Sasquatch in your own backyard. Out of desperation, I applied the shotgun approach toward the situation, and to emphasize my use of the word desperation, I thought I ought to annotate by providing the Dictionary.com definition of shotgun approach.

shotgun approach: (noun) the hasty use of a wide range of techniques that are nonselective and haphazard.  

            If you know the slightest bit about my personality, you may agree that that ain’t my style. So there I was, emailing every local field biologist I could think up, offering my free assistance to the Forest Service and Nature Center, and drafting cover letters justifying my merit in the form of passion for the outdoors and work ethic. I came up short all fall and grasped still air with cold and empty hands all winter.

            Applying for jobs became a game of sorts, without consequence nor reward. I sought out every job in the Western United States that I fulfilled at least a few of the minimum requirements for, which amounted to around 150 jobs. I would take a moment to paint a mental picture of my life in each position, revamp my resume, draft up a new cover letter, and send it off into the deep abyss of the Internet, expecting nothing in return. I was at peace with the idea that I was simply gifting my employers with one more application to shuffle through and coldly toss aside. I suppose I became numb to the rejection. Yet there was still that glimmer of hope, like the first star to shimmy through the orange evening sky, that someone somewhere would give me a chance.

Driving toward Tuolumne Meadows

            Spring burst through the frost and in a matter of three weeks, I received ten requests for interviews. Things were looking up! I created tables weighing pros and cons for each job and studied up for the interviews. A few were nerve-racking, a few were pleasant, but only one truly moved me. In fact, it felt less like an interview and more like chatting with an old friend that I hadn’t seen in years. Everything about the job description was thrilling, too: backpacking, Yosemite, endangered species, bighorn sheep, amphibians, physically demanding, $25 per day stipend… wait what? Can I even live off that income? I decided I’d make that sacrifice for the sake of my happiness. How could I not when the quote I held most dear during this career searching voyage was “Look for a situation in which work brings you as much happiness as your spare time.”

            So I accepted the position, passing up an opportunity to perform small mammal trapping at a GS-5 level for the Forest Service in Lake Tahoe, another to work in fisheries in Eureka, and a few others that I could have succeeded in. I was going to spend my summer as an ecological intern for the USGS in Yosemite National Park. 

Scattered Verses

I must have over a dozen notebooks scattered throughout my room. None of them have been designated a specific purpose. Rather they all have, in no particular order, song lyrics I relate to, to-do lists, scribble love notes, food shopping lists, journal entries, packing lists, and unfinished poetry. I enjoy grabbing up one and flipping through, wondering what was troubling my mind at the time. Recently, I found a notebook in my car and flipped to this entry from November 9, 2012:

I've gone off the deep end, love. I hit the water hard, without thinking much about how badly a belly flop would hurt. But hell, it felt like I was flying up until that cold water slapped my face and knocked the vital happy breath out of my chest. It hurts, I'm cold and helplessly flailing about just trying to find the surface. At this point, I've lost touch, I've lost all reason. I'm reaching in all directions but grasping nothing at all. 
You reach down and pull me up for a breath, smile and say, "I missed you!" You take no note of my panicked state, in fact, you don't even notice that I don't know how to swim or that my face is red from the impact of the fall. You are bliss and radiate in all conditions. You take me higher.
So it is for you, my love, and for me, my wretched and mangled confidence, that I will change. Adopting a mindframe of compassion and mindfulness over discipline and restriction. I want to be beautiful for you, and I want to feel happy like I did when I was in control of my own life.
Here's to the beginning of something great. And so the journey begins with a new awakening!

Six blank pages later, in the same notebook, I came across this entry, written in red pen and dated October 26, 2012:

My mind is buzzing. The emotions emerged from some ignored place deep inside, like air pockets bubbling up from thick winter molasses ten seconds in the microwave. Or was that just gas from my intestines? Whatever it was, my face felt the effects and my cheeks reddened almost as quickly as an electric burner on the stove set to high. My eyes narrowed and began to sweat, or maybe I just hoped it was sweat to accompany the burning in my face. Suppressing the waterfall of tears came as no easy task, but it had to be done because such an unexpected rainfall would most likely cause thunder showers, and no one needs lightening in this setting. 
So was it an attack? Only to my soul. It was the fractured board on the stairway through the back of the house, the route I never take for obvious reasons. It was the stray cat that usually digs through the neighbors garbage, but tonight it would seek my fresh trashbag and pounce from around the corner to catch me off-guard. It was, essentially, reality slapping my in the face after taking off is mask which he had worn for so long pretending to be my beautiful, smiling, assuring friend. It was not an attack at all. But nonetheless, I wasn't prepared for it. 
What am I going to do with my life? When am I going to pay off my school debts? Why am I unfazed and unconcerned about pondering these questions everyday of my life? Why today did you wake me from my sweet sweet slumber that I did not realize how much I really do enjoy until I am disturbed from it?
I'm not ready to move on.
I'm not even ready to think about moving on. But that's the thought that will keep me up tonight. 
When tomorrows sun wakes from the horizon, the morning will bring the ignorant bliss back. The flowers of my mind and chirping birds of my heart will wake like it's their first ever morning - a new birth - and I will be okay.
But right now, I feel attacked.

Reading back over them, I still have no idea what and who those entries are about. I enjoy the vagueness of it all, though. The poetic inspiration that vulnerability can foster. I find myself pining to be the victim, the heartbroken damsel. To feel an ache of longing that stirs metaphors and allows the words to flow more freely, unrestricted by the thickness of a wholesome love, whether for oneself, another, or life. I'm finding it much healthier and progressive to count the starts that shine through on a stormy night rather than the clouds. 

Babe, you're a different breed of lover. You know who I want to be and you push me to be it. Most other lovers assure me that I'm perfect the way I am. Your confidence pierces through my sheath of comfort, creating holes through which I see a better, more enjoyable life. Your style is coated thick with the debris that settles when arrogance and honesty collide. I have to remind myself not to take you the wrong way, because you always mean well. I feel that our relationship doesn't demand justification, nor does it promise prosperity. It simply is what it is today. Tomorrow it will be whatever it will be tomorrow. Simple as that? Let's not over-think it. I wonder, sometimes, what it was that threw me into your orbit. I suppose it was some power too explosive and impulsive to put my finger on. I guess I'll never know.

Writing has been a huge part of my life and self-expression. I rarely broadcast these emotions, but rather keep them tightly pressed between blank lined pages that I find years later and regret never applying them to some sort of creative endeavor. I decided to start blogging again. A lot of my posts may be laden with verses I've dug up from some dusty notebook or an old journal entry, but I will try to open up my mind to more regular postings of my adventures as well.

I'm getting worse at saying goodbye... 
But you didn't break my heart, truly. You made it fuller. You expanded it's capacity to love - nature, science, olives, good tequila, the blunder of love itself. I fell for you, and you fell for me, and then we fell apart. And that's okay. It would have happened another way if it was supposed to.  

No Compass

Reaching, missing, falling
You are the clueless culprit
I am nothing, nowhere

You frolic behind the blunder
In your serendipity
I sink through my dreams

Trade one penny for another
Perhaps a shinier one
Same date, same Abe, same wish

In haste and derailment 
I aim to go anywhere
Somehow anywhere leads to you

Not this time though
Mister Blasterskite
I'll hum a tune of magnificence

I'll find what you lost
Be the star in your sky
Shining bright when your eyes close

Night Life

Another wasted glance

Just go ask her to dance

Ripe like a spring flower

Yet you’re gonna be a coward

With intentions unknown

You blend like a stone

Thus tonight’s escapade

Ain’t getting you laid

While that fifth glass of wine

Makes them all look fine

You’ll step on some toes

But we’ll see where it goes

So you think you’ve got swag

But you missed her red flag

When her eyes flashed alarm

As you tickled her arm

And though she’s not the gal

You initially prowled

She’s got enough glamour

To bring down your standards

Just looking for fun

Or is she the one

It’s the wrong place and time

To straddle that line

Should have had a bouquet

But it’s rum you display

Maybe it’s her taste

But it seems like a waste

So go on and shake

She’ll be gone when you wake

Carpe Diem?

Seize the moment, seize the day

Seize me up, and she’s betrayed

Can’t see the past, callused at last

So nil remains to force abstain

You heave the pain into the rain

To wash away your oath to stray

Silver line on our clear divine

Our wishing well, no kiss and tell

But we pull apart to save the heart

From the strain, the ruptured vein

You and I must say goodbye

Forever devote to empty hope